


Corruption

by Cerberusia



Series: Dark Voltron Week 2017 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Brainwashing, Dubious Consent, Gladiators, Imprisonment, M/M, Slavery, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 10:52:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9320378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia
Summary: It isn't easy to mold Terrans into perfect gladiators. Sendak provides Shiro with the right incentive.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 2 of Dark Voltron Week, the prompts Insanity/Corruption. This is mainly focussed on corruption, though by the end Shiro is probably not completely sane.

It wasn't easy to turn Terrans into berserkers. In Sendak's experience they were quicker to fear than to anger, though not without resources. But, as with all species, you simply had to provide the right _incentive_.

In his youth, Sendak had spent long hours on his family's estate. His mother's service record was undistinguished, so it was not large; but his father enjoyed modest renown in alchemical circles and he and his siblings did not want. He had kept leithans there, big shaggy things with horns. They were bred for hunting rather than companionship, but were eager enough to lick his hands - especially when he took on the role of feeding them.

First, they had to have the essential nature. He bred them carefully, selecting for desirable traits, and could tell in their first week of life how the pups would turn out in temperament. He wanted them alert and possessed of a keen hunting instinct, neither too cuddly (despite the atavistic pleasure of a warm, squirming leithan pup in the crook of his arm) nor so uninterested in people that they would be difficult to train with praise.

Then they had to be correctly nurtured. You could turn any pup to the bad with improper training. They were encouraged, by food and praise, to absolute obedience - even the ones he would not keep, since a well-trained leithan would fetch a much higher price than one that would not come when called. Retrieving was practiced; he worked the animal further and further away from him. If a sinna lizard scuttled across the field, they could chase it - but only at his signal.

And they were fed on the most nutritious feed of all: the blood and meat of their fellows.

Shiro had come to him already an adult, so Sendak did not have the advantage of having brought him up. He was told that all the Terrans they had were males, which was a shame: he would like to see Shiro's genes passed on and to have a Terran of his own to mould from an infant, even if they did (as Shiro told him, much later) take an unconscionably long time to mature.

But in Shiro, with his gladiator's physique and sharp eyes, Sendak saw potential.

As Commander he naturally was in charge of whole platoons of many different kinds of troops; but before he had risen through the ranks he had been Lieutenant Sendak, placed in charge of five berserker units. He learnt his men's names, numbers and histories. Heedful of his own experience with leithans, he paid careful attention to their backgrounds, upbringings and characters. He monitored their progress as closely as a parent monitors their child's.

He discovered in short order that a successful berserker needed the same attributes as a hunting leithan: physical fitness, keen senses, alertness - and a deep love of the hunt all the way to its bloody conclusion.

Under his leadership, the Gamma Berserkers became some of the Emperor's most valuable units - and earned him his commission to Major. He had written a training manual which was now the standard text. In his foreword, he credited each and every one of his childhood leithans by name.

He bore all this in mind when he took Shiro from his cell after his second successful match.

It was immediately obvious that Shiro - they knew that was his name because it was what the other Terrans called him - was possessed of the instincts for which Sendak had bred his leithans. You only had to see him in the ring to witness the keen hunting instinct, the physical prowess, the intelligence. His first win against Myzax had brought him deserved acclaim.

Sendak made Shiro stand in the middle of his antechamber and circled him slowly. Sentry guards stood at the door. Shiro, still wearing his prisoner's rags and chained hand and foot, stood very still and stared straight ahead as Sendak examined him from every angle.

Some people thought you should start with a feral to create a proper berserker, envisioning them slavering, barely contained, at the end of a leash; but Sendak preferred them tame to start. Then you broke them down to their baser instincts just as you liked - and _then_ you built them back up so only you had the key.

Shiro would be difficult: he had a strong sense of self, even after months of captivity and seeing his blockmates be picked off by stronger gladiators, sent in as an appetiser before the real challenger came. But Sendak was his father's son: if you don't attempt the volatile experiments, you'll never achieve glory.

Although Shiro clearly felt the weight of Sendak's scrutiny on him, he continued to look straight ahead. His notes recorded a probable military origin, which Sendak liked: no need to teach him how to kill.

Sendak sent Shiro away with his chin held high, his walk as close to a stride as his leg irons allowed. That attitude would soon change. He had held his nerve, but Sendak could smell the sour fear-sweat on him.

Shiro's next fight was three days later. The arena was more heavily crowded than usual: after reports of a Terran beating a more experienced fighter, interest would have been roused.

First, the champion: a Halurian who'd bulldozed through a dozen or so smaller gladiators. Female, apparently, though the species had little sex distinction to the naked eye.

"Cafa!" The cry went up. She strode into the arena on four of her six limbs, knobbly green hide glistening. Her cropped tail, lost in at capture, had been replaced by a gleaming cybernetic. Someone had a lot of pride in this one.

Pushed out into the arena, Shiro looked small and vulnerable: all the Terrans they had did, due to their oddly smooth skin. But the harsh light flooding the arena must be intentional to give him an advantage as the challenger: Terrans did well in bright environments that would have made a Galra don goggles, a corollary to their poor night vision.

The crowd seethed in anticipation of a good match. Cafa was far bigger and stronger, from a race with excellent natural armaments and taste for the vicious; but Shiro was faster and more agile, and his win in his last match had been characterised by intelligence and cunning.

She drew first blood: a thin cut on Shiro's cheek as he was a hair too slow in dodging. He dropped and rolled, coming up almost beneath her for a strike at her unprotected belly. Cafa shrieked terribly as he gouged her abdomen: he rolled again to prevent her hindmost leg from grabbing and crushing him.

As Sendak had predicted, Shiro turned Cafa's size against her. They circled each other for long minutes, neither willing to get within the other's range. Cafa's stamina was greater, and if she had had patience she could have tired Shiro out then gone for the kill - but she must have assumed that his earlier hit had been pure luck and that she could overwhelm him with sheer power, because she abruptly leapt at him, all six limbs off the ground.

Shiro dropped, evaded her grasping hands, and jacknifed off the ground as he thrust his blade up - and straight through her eye into her brain. A gout of dark blood erupted and drenched his arm as she shrieked again - and fell. Shiro rolled out of the way in the nick of time. He lay there on the sand, his chest rising and falling rapidly, next to his opponent's corpse.

Before the roaring had even died down, Sendak sent Telik to the Chief Handler with instructions. Thus, when Shiro was led out of the arena looking dazed to be re-cuffed, he was delivered not to his own cell, but to Sendak's antechamber once more.

Sendak was already there; he had left as soon as Shiro could no longer be seen. Telik he motioned out of the room: if Shiro suddenly gained a second wind, the sentries would suffice.

Fresh from the arena, Shiro seemed to be experiencing the after-effects of adrenaline, manifesting as a pallor to the complexion and a sweat - which gave a pleasant shine to Terran skin, rather than the matted fur it would give a Galran. He did not, Sendak was pleased to note, shake. His clothes were not badly torn, but half his torso and one of his sleeves was soaked in Cafa's blue-black blood all the way to the shoulder. He looked Sendak right in the eyes.

"You'll enjoy this eventually," said Sendak as he took hold of Shiro's blouson and lifted it. Shiro raised his arms to let Sendak pull the garment off him, his eyes not leaving Sendak's face. Sendak could feel the tension thrumming through his body, but he didn't try to repeat what he had done to Cafa.

He resisted Sendak when he reached to take off the bodysuit: Sendak had to call for the sentries to restrain him while he was stripped. Nevertheless, he seemed glad to be free of the bloodied material, which Sendak used to gently wipe the remaining blood from his skin. Like the Galra, Terrans instinctively kept themselves clean.

"You must be hungry," said Sendak. Enough time had elapsed since the fight for the adrenaline to stop contracting his stomach. Gladiators were fed enough to have some fight in them, but no more until they proved themselves.

Shiro made no reply. Even when Sendak ordered the sentries to stand down, he did not attempt to cover any parts of his body, though the Terrans had been observed deliberately looking away from one another as they washed, implying that they had a nudity taboo. Perhaps among Terrans, as among the Galra, military habits bred a lack of shame about bodies.

Sendak went to the table that stood by the door to his office proper. A small hotbox was built into it; and taking off the cover, he produced from this hotbox a small quantity of meat, cut into strips. It was heffachuck meat, he was told - cooked and guaranteed to be entirely compatible with Terran antibodies, though he couldn't guess whether Shiro would find the smell appetising. He took a strip in his hand and held it out.

Shiro refused, at first; but Sendak had expected that and simply waited. He noticed that Shiro had to swallow more often, and entertained himself with fanciful calculations of how rate of swallowing might correlate to length of time necessary to give in to hunger.

His arm was beginning to tire when Shiro's resolve finally crumbled.

Sendak had not offered the meat at head-height, so Shiro had first to kneel down. Sendak watched his gaze turn inwards as practicality warred with pride. Some would have simply shoved him down, but Sendak believed it more important that he should take the action for himself, however long the wait: it would make him more pliable in future.

At last his knees bent, and he sank more or less gracefully to the floor.

"Very good," said Sendak. Shiro's lip curled back from his teeth: he didn't want Sendak's praise. That would soon change. But his head lowered and he leaned forward to take the strip of meat from Sendak's claws.

Sendak picked up another strip and watched his extended neck, the working of his jaw and throat. The heffachuck was tender enough that even his blunt Terran teeth could tear it. Did it taste good to him? After months of prison rations, could he tell?

Shiro swallowed. The strangely charming little lump at his throat - not a tumour but part of the developed larynx - bobbed. Sendak held out another strip of meat. Shiro took it. In this way they got through the six strips that Sendak had ordered.

Shiro got to his feet a little unsteadily - the fight had tired him. Sendak looked him up and down as he motioned a sentry to come forward with another bodysuit and blouson. Shiro put them on without a sound. Terran genitalia, Sendak noticed, did not retract neatly like those of the Galra, but rather were exposed and flopped about. It was erotic to watch - as if Shiro were permanently displaying his readiness for intercourse, as well as his vulnerability.

The sentries took him back to his cell almost asleep on his feet. Sendak went to his desk and leant back in his chair.

"Telik," he said into the comm. At once his assistant entered the room - he had only been in the side room, no doubt compiling reports of his troops' training progress and sorties.

Sendak spread his legs a little wider. The well-trained Telik serviced him with gratifying eagerness as well as competence; Sendak closed his eyes in pleasure and thought of Shiro in Telik's place.

Being almost uninjured, it was not long before Shiro was brought to fight again. Another massive brute had been picked for his opponent: it was what the crowd wanted. Throgg was a furred and horned biped with outsize genitalia and a habit of sexually brutalising his fallen opponents: this joining of sex and violence naturally made him very popular. Sendak himself had enjoyed several of Throgg's previous matches.

As in Shiro's match with Cafa, there was a certain amount of circling to start - but then Throgg sprang in close and Shiro was there to meet him, blade against club. They pushed and struggled with each other for long moments before hurling themselves apart to circle once more. Throgg's penis was everted, red and slick - he wore no clothing in the ring, preferring the protection of his fur and to advertise his natural advantages, so to speak.

They clashed again - and Shiro staggered away with a gash down his arm. Throgg howled, and the audience howled back eagerly. Sendak could see Throgg's huge knot emerging from his sheath. He was anticipating the end. Sendak contemplated the possibility of Throgg thrusting his dripping penis into Shiro and tying with him while he cried out, and was not entirely displeased. It was no more than what Sendak himself wished to do to him.

Another frantic engagement, the two gladiators grappling with each other, strength against strength - and then Shiro crumpled to the ground. Throgg kicked away his sword and turned him over onto his back. Shiro was holding his side, mouth open and face tight in a rictus of agony. Throgg's penis drooled a string of clear fluid that dripped on Shiro's leg. The crowd snarled in delight: that equipment would _destroy_ a Terran -

Then Throgg bent down, and for a moment the action became confused, because he disappeared - and then Sendak saw that he was on the ground, red blood streaming from his ruined eyes, as Shiro grabbed his sword to slit his throat.

"HOLD!" roared an official, barely audible over the din of the crowd, and sentries rushed to haul the combatants apart before the killing blow could be dealt. Throgg was popular: evidently he had a patron willing to intercede for him. He was carried out of the arena under sedation to prevent him from further damaging his eyes.

Shiro followed, escorted by more sentries. A faint displacement of air beside Sendak told him that Telik was gone to fetch him - without even needing to be told. Of all the assistants Sendak had had so far, Telik was by _far_ his favourite.

This time, Shiro didn't struggle when Sendak stripped him out of his bloodstained clothes. He was learning that Sendak could do whatever he liked to him.

"One day," Sendak told him, "you will lick the blood off yourself." Shiro still made no response.

He hand-fed him again, pleased that Shiro took meat from his fingers so eagerly. He would need to keep his strength up. Sadly he felt no smooth Terran tongue rasp at his clawpads, but that would come in time.

He allowed himself to scratch the claws of his free hand lightly through Shiro's headfur, in the manner the leithans had always enjoyed. It occurred to him that he was treating Shiro as more of a pet than he ever had the leithans. Perhaps it was because he slobbered less.

In the next fight, Shiro lost his arm.

Hsft was not the fastest gladiator, though she was quick; nor was she particularly strong. Her great advantage was in her mouth. But it seemed that nobody had warned Shiro about this - did he not mingle with the other gladiators? Was he not accepted? - and so when Shiro came close to deal the killing blow after tiring her with his superior stamina, she whipped round her head, flared her hood, and sank her fangs deep into Shiro's arm.

She still died, of course: Shiro's strike had all but cut her head off. But she had had her revenge: her last sight was of Shiro writhing in pain on the befouled sand of the arena. Sendak had often heard such howls from Hsft's victims as agony shot through their bodies. He saw a guard draw his weapon to put down the fallen gladiator. Sendak rose to his feet.

"He lives!" he cried in his most commanding tone. Beside him, Telik repeated his words. The rest of the audience followed, driven by the power in Sendak's voice and the fervour of a crowd. The guard put away his weapon and called for sentries to retrieve Shiro: he would not risk his own skin against an unpredictable gladiator.

Shiro could not keep the arm, of course: the tissue was necrotic even as he was carted out. But Sendak had the solution.

Shiro made a remarkable fuss when he woke up, but Sendak was patient.

"Really, it's for the best," he said as Shiro traced the join between metal and flesh over and over. "A cybernetic limb will give you an enormous advantage, once you learn how to use it properly."

"It doesn't feel any different," said Shiro without expression, still gazing at his new accoutrement. "If I look away, it's as if my arm is still there."

"Of course it does. Galra tech is the most advanced in the quadrant. The cybernetic _is_ your arm now." He flexed his own metal fingers, which could write in a fine hand or crush a rock to powder.

At last Shiro looked up. His face was white and pink - he kept having to be sedated in order to heal properly, but still he slept poorly.

"When did you lose your arm?" he asked.

"Many years ago now," Sendak answered him. "It was in my second command, a ground engagement for which we were insufficiently prepared. My arm was crushed, and it was decided that I should receive a new, better one." What he did not tell Shiro was that he had long held a fascination with cybernetic enhancements, having an aunt whose artificial eye had made her into a champion sharpshooter.

Shiro was silent for a long while. He looked down at his legs instead of at his new arm, which gave Sendak an excellent chance to study it. It was a sleek metal version of his original limb, no less fine than a soldier would receive. Sendak had picked out the model himself.

Finally, he said:

"Why have you done this to me?"

"Because you are mine," said Sendak, "to do with as I please." Weeks ago, Shiro would have denied it: now he merely pressed his lips together. "You might even," Sendak continued, "be grateful: this is an honour for a gladiator. I could have simply discarded you when it became clear that you would lose your arm. Think on that."

He left Shiro to another dose of nanomachines. It was too much to expect just now that Shiro would lick his hand in gratitude - but he would.

Shiro's next fight was not for another week, giving him time to heal so that he would give a better performance. Sendak did not visit him: he was a busy man, and it would not do to give Shiro the impression that he had nothing better to do than attend his favourite gladiator.

He flew two sorties against the Mvcalichn himself as well as commanding the operation from the bridge. They were an advanced insectoid race that had long harried the Galra after the destruction of their homeworld, protected by the deep caverns they dug wherever they settled, which Galra technology still found it difficult to pick up.

Sendak found it a tiresome exercise: he could only repeat the same tactics that had worked in previous engagements without ever getting to the substance to wipe them out for good. Oh, there were casualties, and more on the Mvcalichn side than theirs - but still the bulk of them escaped. He sent a squadron down to the planet to retrieve what technology they could in the hopes of reverse-engineering it, and went to make his report to an unimpressed Emperor Zarkon. Sendak bore his displeasure with all the dignity he could summon: he wouldn't be any happier in the Emperor's position. Men of high rank had been demoted for less.

The prospect of an exciting arena fight was just the thing to take his mind off the unpleasant and frustrating business. He took his seat - the one reserved for him as an honoured commander - nodded to Telik, and surveyed the crowd. There were plenty there: Shiro had gained quite the following for his exploits.

His opponent had no cybernetic enhancements, but was no less dangerous for it. His name was Menph, and he carried an electrified glaive. He was Shiro's size - no, now that Sendak saw them both in the ring, less. His long, drooping ears and black fur made him stand out against the pale sand.

Sendak had been in charge of the operation that had captured Menph and others of his species. Four years later, Menph had been transferred to this ship and quickly gained a reputation for efficiently outwitting much larger opponents - not unlike Shiro himself. He didn't posture to the crowd: he only held himself still, so still that he seemed frozen. His large green eyes were fixed on Shiro and his new limb.

This will be a close fight, thought Sendak - and he was right. Shiro and Menph were equally matched or nearly. In the end, it was Shiro's new prosthetic that clinched it.

Ten minutes in, both were only lightly wounded. Shiro had suffered a hit from the eletrified glaive, the arena filling with the redolence of burnt flesh, but in the process had been able to break it. The edge was still sharp, but it no longer crackled threateningly.

But Shiro was in a worse position, because Menph had managed to disarm him entirely. His sword was now behind Menph, leaving him no hope of retrieving it unless he rushed his opponent and hoped for the best. The crowd were probably hoping for that: the build-up had been suitably tense, but they wanted more blood than had yet been spilt.

Instead it was Menph, surely thinking that he had the high ground, who rushed Shiro. His glaive arced through the air - 

\- and was sliced in two, the top half spiralling away to land point-down in the sand several feet away. His eyes widened - but Shiro was upon him, new arm glowing purple. And so Menph met the same fate as his glaive.

Before they took him away, Shiro looked up. His eyes met Sendak's in the crowd. There was something in them that Sendak had not seen in him before.

He didn't seem all there when Sendak washed and fed him: he was conscious of his arm, which he kept looking at as though he expected to see Menph's viscera still drenching it. It was a foreign object again. And he had been doing so _well_.

"They didn't tell me what it would do," he said at last, when the last of the meat was gone and Sendak had not dismissed him but kept him on his knees for several minutes. "I didn't know it would do that to Menph."

"What you would do with _it_ to Menph," Sendak corrected him. "The arm is part of you. You wanted to kill Menph, so you used it to do so."

Shiro shook his head. His eyes were closed, the corners of his mouth tight with strain.

"I don't want it," he said, as if to nobody. "I don't want it."

"But you have it. And it will make you stronger." Sendak petted him again, like a fractious leithan, until all the tension and fight left him in a sigh.

After that, it was easier.

No longer did Shiro use a blade, but his bare hands. It made for better kills in the arena: the crowd liked it when gladiators got up close and personal. And the sight of a gladiator exiting the arena covered in his opponent's blood always felt more satisfying than if he left it relatively clean. Who went to see a bloodless gladiator fight?

So Sendak stripped him and washed him until Shiro bent under his hands. Telik told him, having heard it from the guards, that Shiro kept his distance from the other prisoners - that they were afraid of him. As was only right, Sendak thought; but it explained why he was willing to let Sendak touch him with a minimum of fuss. Terrans were sociable, tactile creatures.

Two things that Sendak noticed:

The first, Shiro's growing confidence with his arm. He smashed opponent's skulls in or broke their legs when they had him on the ground. He once ground a Flocc's wrist to powder when she wouldn't let go of her weapon. He moved with the knowledge that it was a part of him, entirely under his control. It gave Sendak the greatest pleasure to see it.

The second, Shiro's arousal when fighting, an obvious tent in his form-fitting suit. Was an erection during combat a product of adrenaline in Terran males, as in Galra, or something else?

After a fight in which he'd torn Lldafao's head right off, he was escorted to Sendak's chambers covered in blood and still erect.

Sendak inspected him once he was nude, wiping his face and neck down with a wet cloth. He slowed his strokes to carressing rather than scrubbing, feeling Shiro shudder just a little. Terran genitalia were not so far from their everted Galra counterpart, though lacking the knot at the base: the penis was flushed red with blood and hard so that it pointed up, the testicles carried outside the body, though they were smaller than a Galra's would be.

Sendak re-wetted the cloth and began to wash Shiro more thoroughly. They were rarely bathed in the cells, and Shiro had given an excellent performance. Cleanliness would be his reward. Sendak dragged the rough cloth down Shiro's back, the sensitive insides of his arms, over his buttocks, up the soft skin of his inner thighs. He felt the muscle and scars, and traced them carefully. What a fine specimen he'd found.

Shiro trembled for one long moment when Sendak finally wrapped the cloth around his erection - but he did nothing, said nothing.

Sendak knew then that he had him.

"Here," he murmured, gently drawing the cloth up and down his penis, and guided Shiro's head to rest in the crook of his neck. Shiro leant forward obediently, legs shaky.

He had never touched a Terran sexually, but the basics weren't too difficult to figure out. He mimicked thrusting motions with his hand and let Shiro pant quietly into his neck. It would be a long time since someone had done this for him. Sendak could make it good. He found that the head was most sensitive, and circled it with his thumb. One of Shiro's legs jerked.

"Good boy," said Sendak in his delicate ear, low and soothing. "Good boy. Well done."

Shiro's orgasm produced white, viscous seed, his hips jerking erratically back and forth into Sendak's grip. The air smelled of salt. Sendak caught it all in the washcloth and put it to one side. He had produced less the half the semen a Galra would - presumably due to smaller testicle size. No doubt the medical team had already tested his semenary output in order to assess his suitability for breeding programs, should they find any Terran females.

Freed from Sendak's hold, Shiro slipped to his knees once more. Sendak dropped the cloth in the water with a splash, and waited.

Shiro didn't crawl to him on hands and knees. Not that time. But he closed his eyes.

A month and five fights later, he tore open his opponent's rib cage with his new hand. Blood and viscera spattered the ecstatic first row. Shiro reached into the steaming red cavern and pulled something out.

Sendak didn't even need to see it to know that it was his opponent's heart.

He was completely covered in blood, of course: so much so that once he had been stripped Sendak abandoned the usual clean-up routine with the basin and took him to the bathroom instead. Shiro watched him as he took off his own clothes and folded them. His gaze was not sexual but it held a certain alert quality, a certain interest.

Under the shower, Shiro was passive. But his eyes followed Sendak's as he was washed clean.

"Close your eyes," Sendak told him as he lathered up Shiro's hair - some blood had got in it and made it stiff. Shiro did, but opened them as soon as it was rinsed. Sendak kept his hands there for a long moment, kneading Shiro's scalp and watching the warm water relax his muscles. It was certainly easier than washing the leithans, who weren't content until they had some part of you to lick in return.

Shiro had an erection, of course. Sendak made sure to touch it with his thigh whenever he stepped closer to scrub away dried blood. He felt his own penis starting to slide out of its sheath.

Feeling it, Shiro looked down. The look of surprise on his face was extremely gratifying.

Sendak turned off the water and pressed Shiro against the wall, crushing their erections between their stomachs. They could both feel the rest of Sendak's penis extending from his sheath.

Shiro opened his mouth and moved his head forwards so that his mouth touched Sendak's, which he sucked at with great fervour. A Terran mating practice? Sendak opened his mouth and mimicked Shiro. The tongue that slid into his mouth a moment later was unexpected, but shockingly pleasurable. Sendak stroked Shiro's tongue with his own and felt a delightful shiver run through Shiro's body. By now he was letting Sendak hold him against the wall instead of supporting his own weight.

He couldn't penetrate Shiro, not yet - it wasn't sensible to try it for the first time in a shower. So he hitched him up against the wall, making Shiro seize his shoulders, and thrust his cock against Shiro's. Shiro's head fell forward as Sendak pushed their bodies together again and again, encased in the cage of Sendak's arms, helpless, reliant. His mouth opened, his body tensed and relaxed and flexed as he were trying to escape, which Sendak found stimulating.

Their climaxes flooded Shiro's stomach with white. Sendak didn't immediately turn the shower back on so that he could watch it drip down Shiro's strong thighs for a while- but then he was caught again by Shiro's mouth. He obliged. For a relatively backwards race, Terrans had developed some very diverting erotic customs.

Once they were both clean and had managed to disentangle themselves, Sendak shaking the water out of his fur and Shiro drying his with a handcloth, Sendak took Shiro back to the antechamber. He led the way, uncaring that he was giving Shiro his naked back.

Once Shiro was again dressed in fresh clothes, Sendak paused before sending him away.

"If your performance in the next match is as good as in this one, I will permit you to sleep at the end of my bed." This was a reward he had never permitted the leithans.

"I understand," said Shiro. "I - look forward to it." And the sentries escorted him out.

Sendak treasured the look in his eye: it was not unlike Telik's when he mentioned that some job would likely carry a side benefit or two. Shiro had any number of mechanisms to defend against pain - Sendak had seen them. But no species he had met could defend themselves against pleasure.


End file.
